quiltersmuse.com Blog

The topic of this post is cracks. I hope that word does not scare off the timid. Let me explain.

I live on a once quiet, now busy street. I have seen the pictures of the days of horse and buggy, on this thoroughfare, and I long to have lived in that era. We’ve come a long way, and that is not always a good thing. Age-wise, our 1821 house is out of place in this neighborhood. Across the street, there are two apartment complexes, one in a former Mill building. Other houses in the immediate area seem to have been built in the 1950s era. There are a few older houses close by, but none quite as old as ours.

That information as a backdrop, I will tell you that every day large trucks whiz past our house on our two lane street. These are mega semi-trailer trucks, delivering gasoline, food items, and other consumable goods to businesses just north of here, where deer used to graze in the (former) fields, and when there was a store that was called “Thirty Pines.” At that time, there actually were thirty pine trees on the lot. (The trees have all been cut down, the store expanded, and yet, the name has been retained!)

Every time one of the nine-wheelers roll past my door, it creates a wind tunnel, and my whole house shakes, rattles, and “cracks.” The walls are composed of old horsehair plaster covered with wallpaper. The intensity of vibration causes the wallpaper to split, too. Some of the boards, like the wainscoting in the living room, have cracked. Some of the kitchen cupboard doors have splits.

We have wide floorboards on the upper levels of the house, and it is there that the faux-Ladybugs “over-winter.” I did find some antique sewing pins in some of those cracks but have to constantly use a magnetic picker-upper to retrieve pins and needles I drop between those same cracks in my sewing room.

Now, personally, I sometimes like cracks. For instance, I am charmed beyond belief when I see violets, or daisies, or johnny jump-ups growing out of a crack in the sidewalk.

A smile comes to my lips remembering a cute Get Well card sent to me years ago. It was based on the old saying, “Step on a crack (on a sidewalk), break your mother’s back.” The card depicted “mothers” who were in a hospital because their kids had stepped on cracks. Ok, I know. The description loses a lot in the translation!

Speaking of other cracks, if I had a nickel for every wise crack, (er, remark), that had ever been sent in my direction, I’d be a wealthy woman. I’ve often threatened to write them all down, for future use in a novel! Is it really true that a wise crack a day will keep the doctor away?

Some cracks are just fine. The cracks in my wall are not in that category. I wish that I could move this house to a farm with a lot of acreage, in Vermont, and keep chickens, and pigs, and horses, a cow, and some goats. There would have to be a babbling brook or river across the street, or a swamp teaming with bird life and wildlife, in close proximity, for purposes of sketching and photography. Ah, I know I’m dreaming! One has to hold on to dreams. Remember the saying, “You can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl?”

Of course, the verb “to crack” has a number of meanings. “To crack open a case” means to have a breakthrough in solving a crime. “To sit and to crack,” as in the Scottish song I sing, means to “sit and chat.” If I thought more, I could probably think of other examples.

“Smilin’ Thru,” at the “crack” of dawn.

Patricia